VideoNuze Posts

These are complicated times for video content providers, with more opportunities to monetize their video inventory and partner with advertisers, yet more complexity as well. How to succeed in this rapidly evolving environment was the topic of our Video Ad Summit panel, “Modernizing the Monetization of Video: The Content Provider’s Perspective.”

The session included Lorne Brown (Founder & CEO, Operative), Sean Holzman (Chief Digital Revenue Officer, Bonnier), Stephano Kim (SVP, Ad Operations & Chief Digital Strategist, Turner Broadcasting), David Morris (Chief Revenue Officer, CBS Interactive) and Lisa Valentino (Chief Revenue Officer, Conde Nast Entertainment), with Tom Herman (CEO, DashBid) moderating.

The wide-ranging discussion touched on various topics including how campaign success metrics are changing, why performance and engagement are paramount, how content providers are creating their own data management platforms and selectively exposing their first-party data, why the consumer is really in the driver’s seat, the role of branded entertainment, the challenges of moving to a direct-to-consumer approach at scale, ad-blocking and much, much more.

Watch the session video now (32 minutes, 36 seconds)

The leadoff session at the recent Video Ad Summit focused on the topic of whether TV and video advertising are converging or diverging. In other words, are advertisers going to opt for converged, multiscreen campaigns that incorporate TV, or is ad spending a zero sum game with advertisers shifting spending from TV to video?

With tens of billions of dollars of annual TV and video ad spending, obviously this is a pressing question. Scott Ferber, Chairman and CEO of Videology, kicked off the session with a compelling presentation that made the case for convergence, with data playing a key role in making this happen.

Then Scott moderated a discussion with Andrew Feigenson (Managing Director, Digital, Nielsen), Kris Magel (Chief Investment Officer, Initiative U.S.), Melissa Roberts (GM, Enterprise Solutions, FreeWheel) and Brian Wieser (Senior Analyst, Pivotal Research Group). The group dug into the convergence-divergence question from all angles.

Watch the session video now 42 minutes, 33 seconds

I'm pleased to present the 279th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Change is everywhere in the video and TV industries and this week 6 different news items hit our radar, which Colin and I think illustrate how quickly things are moving. In today's podcast we discuss each of them and why we think they're significant.

The items include continued falling linear TV ratings as measured by Nielsen, Hulu distributing Showtime, new research showing that Netflix's audience is size larger than those of broadcast TV networks, Tennis Channel's converged TV Everywhere-OTT model, HBO premiering 2 new shows on Facebook and Ooyala's new data showing that 42% of video views are now on mobile.

(note: Colin wanted to clarify one point - when citing Netflix viewership, he said it was 10 million hours streamed per quarter when it's actually 10 billion hours)

Listen in to learn more!

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Ooyala has released its Q1 '15 Video Index, and as with all of its recent reports, the headline is the surging growth of mobile video, whose share is now at 42% of online video views. That's up nearly 5x from the 9% share mobile video recorded in Q1 '13. Ooyala restated its forecast that mobile video will surpass 50% of online video views in Q3 '15, if not sooner.

No surprise, Ooyala cites smartphones as the big driver of mobile video usage, noting that the ratio of smartphone plays to tablet plays has increased from 2:1 in Q4 '13 to 4:1 in Q1 '15. In fact, tablet share has remained constant at 8% during that time. Ooyala cites the rise of larger screen size smartphones (particularly iPhone 6 and 6 Plus) as spurring mobile video adoption and stunting tablet viewing.

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With talk of cord-cutting everywhere these days, independent ad-supported cable TV network Tennis Channel is showing early signs of success with a compelling new model in which linear, TV Everywhere and OTT converge to super-serve audiences and reinforce the value of sports on pay-TV.

At the 2014 French Open, Tennis Channel launched "Tennis Channel Plus" which runs $12/month or $80/year. Tennis Channel Plus now provides access to over 650 live events per year and over 1,000 hours of on-demand viewing. This means Tennis Channel adds broader coverage of tournaments it already broadcasts on linear, plus streaming of tournaments it hasn't previously covered.

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thePlatform has introduced Unified Ingest Service, a streamlined process for pay-TV operators to manage video and metadata for distribution across set-top boxes and connected/mobile devices.

thePlatform's co-CEO Marty Roberts told me that while operators are highly motivated to increase the breadth of their content offerings, they are challenged by the fact that ingest is still a largely siloed process depending on distribution channel (e.g. linear, VOD, IP video, etc.). As an example, Marty noted that in one operator's case, it is now taking in up to 16 different files for the exact same piece of content.

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Teads has announced this morning that its "outstream" video ads are now compatible with Apple's iOS for mobile web. Teads' outstream video ad units can be inserted in text articles on the mobile web and begin to play as the user scrolls the page. They stop playing when the user scrolls past them. This results in 100% viewability.

This past March Teads released its mobile SDK allowing outstream ads to run in mobile apps. But until now outstream ads could not run on mobile web in iOS because the device's full screen native player is force-launched, rather than allowing video ads to be viewed in-page.

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